Virtualized Industrial Workloads in Harmony and the China International Industry Fair

This in an important week in the world of industrial computing with the China International Industry Fair (CIIF) taking place November 5 – 9, in Shanghai. To give you an idea about how important, China’s first-ever moon rover is making its debut at the show before flying to the moon aboard the Chang’e-3 lunar probe later this year. Also for the first time, CIIF has a hall entirely devoted to industrial robots covering industrial automation, motor drives, logic controllers and sensors. I’m excited to be at CIIF to debut a ground-breaking system from Intel that demonstrates finely tuned industrial automation technology with a zither, an ancient instrument with a proud history in China. See this incredible robot in a duet with a human musician below:

The “virtualized industrial workloads in harmony” demo is a Proof-of-Concept (POC) for consolidated industrial workloads running in virtualized environments. Its Intel® Core™ i7 processor-based industrial computing system supports multiple discrete workloads including HMI, data analysis, and motion control. A hypervisor is used to manage the virtualized environment. The real-time applications are running on Wind River VxWorks, embedded workloads are running on Wind River Linux, and the HMI is running on Windows 7 professional.

What makes this POC unique is that it utilizes a virtualized environment running a combination of real-time, embedded and general-purpose workloads. Through virtualization, the system has the ability to support the unique requirements of each workload without interference. This is well-suited for industrial applications because it supports both real time and non-real time workloads on the same CPU. For example, the system can run HMI and motion control simultaneously. We also have a demonstration from a customer at the show that uses the same platform to consolidate workloads.

If you’re not in Shanghai at CIIF, check out the video and stay tuned for some pretty cool “behind the scenes” videos about how this amazing demo was made. You can find me on Twitter: @Intel_Shahram, I’d like to hear your feedback or answer any questions you may have. Look forward to it.

About Shahram Mehraban

Global Head of Energy & Industrial Segments, Intelligent Systems Group
INTEL CORPORATION
Mehraban currently leads a team of marketing engineers and platform architects to drive solution-centric product innovation in Intel's embedded energy and industrial businesses. In this role he is responsible for setting research directions, conducting comparative qualitative and quantitative research globally, leading new product and solution strategy and definition for Intel in the power and automation industries.
Prior to joining Intel in 2000, he held a number of technical marketing and business development roles at Trillium, Glenayre, Nokia and Motorola.
Mehraban received his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from University of British Columbia in 1992 and Master's degree in Business Administration from University of Victoria in 1995. He is a self-proclaimed tech enthusiast and early adopter of all types of consumer electronics. He likes to run and watch European soccer on the weekends. Continue the conversation on Twitter, @Intel_Shahram